Haiku

and old post I never published from April 2016

I love writing. I love the process, the creativity, the imagery of words.  I also love teaching writing.  Back in my classroom days I found it frustrating, being able to get that one on one time with a student to write, edit, reshape, research a piece of their writing with them. In a class of 25, those conferences were never uninterrupted and time would be ticking as the line of children to meet with the teacher grew.  It would get so frustrating that I would give up, mark my suggestions in a red pen on their page, they would make whatever changes to make me happy and I would watch my love of the creative writing process die a slow death.

Today I got that love back.  It’s autumn here and I got up early to plan an autumn art lesson our homeschool social group meets up once a week for art.  They are mostly preschoolers so I found some cool autumn tree painting ideas and leaf rubbing templates.  Then I thought, lets do some autumn inspired poetry for our writing this morning.

Olli did an acrostic poem. Lets just say that this son of mine hasn’t inherited my love of words and writing. For him it was a painful experience that he just wanted to be done with. I was pretty pleased with his finished product though.

Then Lucy and I sat and wrote some Haiku poems together.  These are such great poems. The simplicity being key.  The only rules I gave her were it had to be 3 lines of  5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables and Autumn had to be her muse.

We sat there together writing, I on my poem and Lucy on hers.  After we completed one we would share it and the other would give some feedback.  There was lots of finger counting as we sounded out syllables, grins as we admired the imagery the other had created in a verse. These are the moments where I am so grateful that we can homeschool. They (these moments) are rare but like all rare things incredibly precious.

Autumn in Haiku by Anna

Long shadows lengthen

Sunlight flickers through filters

Amber and Mustard

Colours fluttering

Exposing naked branches

Chill in the morning

Colours of fire

Dancing in the autumn wind

A change in season

Signals change in heart

No going back to summer

What will new days bring?

African Autumn by Lucy

Sun has gone away

It’s been replaced by Autumn

The sun turns to wind.

I pull up my hood

The wind has a brutal force

Blows the leaves off trees

I lift up my head

Colours filling up the sky

Dancing and singing

Stocking winter dens

Squirrels grabbing the last nuts

Time to collect wood.

So to top off a lovely morning I threw the reading and maths books in my handbag and we have headed to La Motte our favourite vineyard to finish the day’s work. Although it hardly feels like work sitting under the oak trees in all their autumn glory. The kids finish up maths sums while watching squirrels scamper around collecting acorns to see them through winter.  While homeschooling isn’t going to be forever, I am so blessed to have these years to do it.